Viva La Vida
by Citrus Delight
Summary: Heiji, Kazuha, and everyone in between in 30 short moments.
1. A White Lie

**Title:** A White Lie  
><strong>Fandom: <strong>Detective Conan  
><strong>Theme: <strong>#14—"lies; trickery"  
><strong>Rating: <strong>PG (slight euphemism?)  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>All DC characters belong to Aoyama! I'm merely playing around with them for my own enjoyment.

* * *

><p>As a toddler, Kazuha often took baths together with her parents. It was inevitable that one day, she would question why she and Mommy looked different from Daddy.<p>

"How come I don't have one?" three-year-old Kazuha asked Daddy, staring at it with wide eyes.

At that moment, both her parents froze momentarily. They always knew this question was going to come someday, but it still managed to catch them by surprise.

Regaining his composure and his calm smile, Kazuha's father pat his daughter on the head as he explained slowly, "it's because you're not old enough yet."

To which his wife snorted and mumbled something about how terrible it was that he was lying to her so blatantly, but it couldn't be helped. How could he explain it otherwise to his precious, _innocent _child?

As for Kazuha, well, she didn't look convinced. "But … but _Heiji _already has one!"

Uh oh.

"It's not fair! I want one too!"

"Uh … Dear? Will you—"

"Nuh-uh, don't even think about it; you got yourself into this mess on your own."

Toyama women were just downright cruel sometimes, weren't they.

"How come only Heiji gets to have one, Daddy? Daddy, tell me, tell me!"

The whining wasn't going to end, was it.

"Kazuha … sweetie … you … you'll … you'll grow one when you're older!"

Inwardly, he cringed as his mouth formed the words. She was going to _hate _him for this one day.

"... You promise?"

But he just couldn't bring himself to deny the girl with her bright, bright eyes. So he crossed his fingers behind his back, and managed to force another one of his serene smiles. One little white lie wouldn't hurt.

"Promise."

-.-.-.-

**Omake**

After she had her father's _word _that she'd grow one of her own, Kazuha couldn't help but stand up and cheer with her arms raised in the air.

She, in fact, was so excited that she decided to tell Heiji all about it on their next play date.

In front of their parents, no less.

And while Heizo Hattori usually had quite the poker face (if that's what you could call it with his ever-present frown), he couldn't help but choke on his green tea at Kazuha's declaration.

Toyama had a lot of explaining to do.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>A bit of silliness from the Toyama family. As for _why_ Kazuha knows Heiji has one, well ... that's a story for another time?

In any case, I've always wanted to tackle a themes challenge, so here we go; there are 30 themes in total. Thanks for reading!


	2. On the Roof

**Title:** On the Roof  
><strong>Fandom: <strong>Detective Conan  
><strong>Theme: <strong>#21—"night sky; veil"  
><strong>Rating: <strong>PG-13  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>All DC characters belong to Aoyama! I'm merely playing around with them for my own enjoyment.

* * *

><p>Heiji likes to disappear sometimes.<p>

Kazuha knows this, but always goes after him anyways.

Nine times out of ten, she'll find him on the first try; Heiji doesn't have that many hiding places. His favorite spot, she thinks, is on top of his room—the roof.

This is where she finds him one night, when the hot summer air feels heavy with humidity. Heiji's lying down on his back, his white cap covering his face from the heat. His hands are folded behind his head, and his posture just screams "relaxed". But Kazuha knows he's anything but; she blew up on him earlier that afternoon, after all. If anything, he's probably still annoyed about it, which is why he's up here.

Once she settles in beside him, resting her chin on her palms over her knees, she breathes his name.

"'m … sorry about earlier …"

She knows she was in the wrong, but god, it kills her to have to say this anyways. Although she understands apologizing first is always the right thing to do, her god damn pride just _has _to get in the way sometimes.

"It's just … today … today's my birthday, y'know? I … I kept hoping and hoping that … for once, today could be just be the _one_ day where you wouldn't run into another case, another police officer, another … _dead body_."

Her voice grows weaker as she goes on, but then she laughs shakily.

"What was I thinking, right? Of course a murder is going t'be more important to you than some dumb birthday party …"

She can feel her lip quivering, and her nose starts to burn. She keeps telling herself in her head '_not now, not now, not now,' _but her vision already starts to blur, so she bites her lip, hard.

"I should know better, right? It's not like … my dad wasn't there at the scene with you or anything, so … so …"

Her voice breaks before she even finishes her thought, and she hides her face now that tears have started welling up in her eyes. God, she must sound like a complete idiot—crying during her own apology? How pathetic.

She's too caught up in her thoughts and the sound of her nose sniffling back her cries to sense Heiji sit up and shift closer. He wraps his arms around her from behind, enveloping her shaking figure against what feels like his broad, broad chest. She jumps slightly at the sudden embrace and feels his head come to rest on her shoulder.

"H-Heiji—"

"_Ahou_," he murmurs, nuzzling against her bare shoulder. "I wasn't mad; you, on the other hand, have every right to be …"

She shakes her head ( _"no, no, no, I was wrong" _), but he brings one hand up to stroke her hair slowly.

"You were right; I was an ass to be late on your birthday. It wasn't fair ta keep you waiting like that … but god, do you know how glad I was to see you still there at the station, waiting for me?"

She feels him smile against her skin and she shudders at the sensation. Once he presses a kiss on the same spot and starts to work his way up her neck, she can hardly sit still.

"Heiji, w-wait—"

Kazuha turns to face him, to look him in the eye, but his arms, still encircled around her waist, pulls her closer to him until he fits her head under his chin. Her weight settles against him comfortably, and a silence hangs in the air until he breaks it with a cheeky smile.

"You were so beautiful at that moment that I had to do a double take t'make sure you were the same girl."

"Heiji—"

"I mean, you just looked so _worried_, and eager to see me, and—"

" … Heiji"

"Y'know, I almost just wanted to pick you up and take you home instead; you just looked so much like a stray dog—!"

"_Ahou_! Don't compare me to animals!"

She's punching him on the shoulder now and pouting, but Heiji doesn't wince; he smiles, oh he _smiles_, so her own tear-stained cheeks can't help but pull up into a wide grin as well, and this …

This just feels right.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>So, in case you were wondering, Kazuha's actual birthday is unknown, but my headcanon says it's in August and she's a Leo. Headcanon also thinks Heiji has a December birthday to be a Sagittarius and Ran's a Cancer with a July birthday. If any of you are familiar with astrological signs, let me know what you think! Otherwise, thanks for reading!


	3. A Chocolate Confession

**Title:** A Chocolate Confession  
><strong>Fandom: <strong>Detective Conan  
><strong>Theme: <strong>#04—"misunderstanding; a heartfelt apology"  
><strong>Rating: <strong>PG  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>All DC characters belong to Aoyama! I'm merely playing around with them for my own enjoyment.

* * *

><p>Kazuha hated Valentine's Day.<p>

It was pretty unfair, wasn't it? Girls were expected to give all the guys knew chocolate; think of all the expenses that would pile up from buying all of those obligatory chocolates! Not to mention the quality of sweets you want to get for your actual crush or sweetheart. Meanwhile, what; guys only have to respond to one person for White Day?

It's just all so _dumb_.

She knew this, she knew it so well that she repeated it to herself _endlessly_, but at the end of the day, she still found herself pausing as she passed a confectionery, glancing at the different types of sets the store had on display. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, extra dark chocolate—'_oh, they even have Heiji's favori_—

_Ahou, ahou, ahou!'_

The cashier standing near her couldn't help but be a little concerned as she watched the Osakan girl start hitting herself on the head with a school bag. Meanwhile, Kazuha was convinced it was the only way to knock some sense into herself. She'd done this last year too; buy chocolate for that dumb octopus-head last minute, then see it get lost in the huge pile he ended up bringing home at the end of the day. Why were other girls so insistent in getting him chocolate too anyways? Were they blind? Delusional?

And here she thought no one could be quite as naive as her to fall for the densest idiot in the world.

Regardless, Kazuha scanned the aisles to see what was left. By this time of the day, she didn't' have tons of choices, but she wasn't looking for anything extravagant. She didn't have enough allowance money left to even afford anything too indulgent anyways, so when she ran across a selection of small chocolate hearts, each adorned with a white letter, something about them just made her smile.

Maybe this was just what she needed this year.

-.-.-.-

Who was she kidding.

She spent ages the night before, carefully wrapping the chocolates in a small gift bag, and for what? She _still _couldn't bring herself to give it to him, and the day was almost over. Something about seeing the piles of sweets in his arms grow as the day went by left a bitter taste in her mouth, and her will was slowly diminishing as the sun continued to set. They were walking home now; she'd finished her aikido practice not too long after he'd come out from kendo. Normally they walked side-by-side, but today, her distracted thoughts had her trailing behind.

She was running out of time.

'_Bah, to hell with it!'_

Kazuha thrust her hand in her bag to take out the sweets, her fingers grazing against the soft jade ribbon, when Heiji suddenly stopped and held his hand out.

"Well …"

She almost ran right into him because he stopped so suddenly. "What?"

"Your chocolates. I'll take them now."

"... What?"

Heiji let out an exaggerated sigh, rolling his eyes at her confusion. "Y'know what I'm talking about; I saw you walk into that store yesterday. And, _hah_, it's not like you're getting chocolates for _anyone else_, right?"

Kazuha just about lost it right then.

"You ass, how would _you _know?"

"I mean, if they really weren't for me, you had all day to give it to someone else, right? I didn't see you approach anyone; you stayed in the classroom all day."

He wasn't lying, she knew it was all logical and true. Which made it that much more infuriating to hear as she felt her cheeks heat up. But Kazuha would jump off a cliff before she admitted it straight out.

"Wh-what, have you been _watching _me all day? I … I didn't realize you had such stalker-like tendencies, Heiji."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't try to weasel your way out of this," he muttered, closing the already narrow distance between them in order to reach for her bag. With Kazuha more concerned about the proximity between them, it was easy enough for Heiji to pull her bag out of her hands and search for the darned candy himself.

"H-Hey! What _the hell _do you think you're doing?"

She kept crying out to regain possession of her bag, but he had the height advantage and she kept grazing the darned thing but couldn't quite grasp it completely. Meanwhile, Heiji's hand kept rummaging through the contents.

"I know they're in here somewhere …"

"Heiji! Let go!"

"... Aha!"

Oh god.

It was all over now.

"Geez, you really _splurged _on the candy this year, huh?" was Heiji's initial sarcastic reaction towards the light package. Kazuha, in turn, punched his shoulder before stomping off ahead of him. That dumb ahou couldn't even show a tiny bit of gratefulness. He'd probably eat all of the chocolates in one go without realizing what they said. It'd be just like him to do something rash like that.

Seconds later, however, she felt a hand on her shoulder pull her back and turn her around. Perhaps it was the surprise of suddenly being pulled, or her growing embarrassment at the slight posibility that he actually _did _read the chocolate's message, but Kazuha's cheeks were thoroughly flushed and her eyes wide when they faced Heiji once more. Meanwhile, Heiji held an almost unexplainable expression.

"Kazuha," he murmured, his emerald eyes gazing at her jade ones. She swore he was looking past just her eyes with that piercing stare, to her very heart and soul, beating what felt like a thousand times a second. "Are you … _serious _… about this?"

She was frozen in place for a while, still trying to comprehend everything that was going on, before she slowly nodded. That was all the response he needed from her to bring his hand behind her head to raise it closer and closer to his. The moment their lips met, she could hardly think coherently anymore, and all that ran across her mind was, '_soft, soft, soft'. _This unfamiliar warm fluttery feeling started to grow inside her, but the brief contact ended as abruptly as it'd started.

And then her conscience finally caught up to the situation at hand, and her fist involuntarily hit him on the head. "A-Ahou! Who said you could do that?" Although she tried to sound upset, her lips were still hypersensitive after feeling his warmth, like … like she wanted _more._

Meanwhile, Heiji clutched his head in pain and winced as he tried to determine whether the attack would cause a large bump or not. "What the hell! You're the one that asked for it!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The chocolates, you dumbass! They said 'ki su,' didn't they?"

Kazuha wanted to go crawl into a hole right about now. She hadn't even imagined he could misread the message that way. "You're the _real_ dummy here; it was supposed to be … to be 'su ki,' ahou …" she mumbled, looking anywhere and everywhere but his face. She couldn't bring herself to face him under his scrutinizing gaze.

Yep, that hole sounded fantastic right about now.

But because her head was turned, she missed the half-smile that broke out on Heiji's face at her explanation. That small, small voice she used to explain herself had really done him in, and he'd swear he couldn't help himself when he brought her in for another kiss.

"I think I liked my version more."

"Sure you did, you octopus head."

"Shut up and just enjoy the kiss, ahou."

"M-mmph—"

* * *

><p><strong><strong>AN: <strong>**Happy Valentine's Day! Just as a clarification, in case anyone missed it, "suki" means "like" in Japanese. Hope you liked the little twist on words there! As always, thanks for reading ~


End file.
